Teaching older homes new tricks

Z-Wave technology gives consumers wireless control over their space.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Category 5 structured cable that transmits audio, video and data throughout the house was a standard feature or add-on in about 15 percent of the new homes built last year.

But what about those whose houses are not wired for whole-house sound, television and controls? Are they doomed to live with wires running all over the place if they, too, want to live in a fully digital world?

Not for much longer.

A new wave of products will be on the market in the next few months -- garage doors, light switches, thermostats, alarms, appliances and home-entertainment centers -- that can be managed and operated by remote control, from inside or outside the house.

The products will operate under the Z-Wave open standard, a radio frequency-based technology that allows users to create a two-way wireless, mesh network within a single-family house or apartment without digging into the walls or scattering wires.

The mesh network, which requires no central controller, allows for complete control over a large number of Z-Wave-compatible devices throughout the house from a single remote, wall panel or Internet interface.

For example, you arrive home from work. As you pull into the driveway, you can roll up the garage door, turn on the inside lights, tell the furnace to notch up the heat a few degrees, and open the curtains, all while still in your car.

Or say you have turned in for the night. With the remote at your bedside, you can turn on the security system and turn off the lights.

So far, applications such as these and dozens of others are found mostly on the new-home market, where special wiring can be installed during construction at a reasonable cost. But now, a consortium of home-control manufacturers is targeting the huge existing-home sector.

"The builder market isn't being excluded," said Bernd Grohmann, vice president of Alliances at Denmark-based Zensys, a provider of wireless-networking technology and the developer of Z-Wave. "But when you look at market opportunity, new homes are only a small percentage of the space."

There have been other attempts at penetrating the existing-home market, but they were either too expensive or too cheap. "They were for people with houses costing over $2 million or they were a low-end `clapper' solution," Grohmann said. "There was no in-between."

For the home-control business to gain credence with homeowners, Grohmann said, products must be interoperable, reliable and affordable. And he thinks Z-Wave technology meets all three criteria.

It provides seamless interplay between multiple vendors and types of applications so you can "mix and match among numerous manufacturers," he said. The network allows complete control throughout the house from a single remote, wall panel or Internet interface.

Because it doesn't depend on line-of-sight communications, Z-Wave finds its way around obstacles that would block other technologies. If a signal is blocked somewhere along the line, the network immediately seeks another path until it connects, Grohmann explained.

The best part, though, is that you can start small and add on as you go along. Up to 232 devices can be installed in a single network, and a single home can have multiple networks. Consequently, home control is feasible for anyone, from the owner of a small studio apartment to someone who lives in a 10,000-square-foot mansion.

The Z-Wave standard was introduced in St. Petersburg last month at the first of what is to be five demonstration houses at sites throughout the country. The technology also was on exhibit at the International Builders Show, which ended Saturday at the Orange County Convention Center.

Sponsored by the Z-Wave Alliance, an open consortium of sometimes-competing manufacturers that includes Intermatic (security alarms and electric timers), Leviton (lighting), Wayne-Dalton (garage doors) and Techniku (window coverings), the modest four-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot, 1970s St. Petersburg house has been remodeled, but no rewiring was required to set it up for home control.

As a result, the entire installation of about 50 wireless control devices that were shown took less than two days. As installed, the devices cost about $5,000, but Intermatic's Michael Einstein said a do-it-yourselfer could have installed them all for $3,000 to $3,500. And that, he added, makes it affordable for people who live in $200,000 to $300,000 houses.

"This house is one-of-a-kind, but it isn't science fiction," Einstein said as he led a tour. "It isn't a fancy model created to wow people by being futuristic, and it isn't out of the realm of possibility for the average homeowner. It's a fixer-upper, and it's real-world."

Owners would use the technology by setting up "scenes," or programmed sets of actions that can be initiated by the press of one button or by remote access. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination -- and, of course, your budget. But a starter kit costs less than $100.

Alliance members are developing hundreds of products embedded with Z-Wave chips that allow signals to bounce from one control to another to provide the most efficient working path. The products, dozens of which are on hardware-store shelves, fall into every conceivable aspect of home control and are easily identifiable by the Z-Wave logo.